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Fuqua School of Business survey shows strong support among CFOs for Simpson-Bowles style plan to fix the debt

Submitted by FixTheDebtNC on Wed, 12/12/2012 - 11:11

Front-paged in the spirit of dialogue. Does not represent the opinions of BlueNC owners.

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Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/ released their quarterly CFO survey http://cfosurvey.org/ and found that more than 62% of polled CFOs favored a Simpson-Bowles style plan to fix the debt, which includes increased revenues along with spending cuts.

In the survey release, Campbell Harvey http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/faculty_research/faculty_directory/harvey/, a Fuqua finance professor and founding director of the survey, expressed the significance of these surprising results, stating, “CFOs generally prefer less taxation across the board, so their willingness to accept increased tax rates is dramatic. U.S. companies are sending a strong message to Washington to meet in the middle to address the budget crisis, and to do it soon.”

Support from CFOs for a plan that includes tax increases is indicative of the urgency of this crisis and the need for Congress and the President to get a solution crafted. The results indicate that CFOs view the uncertainty of unsustainable debt as the greater threat.

“The business community has issued an imperative to our leaders to not only avoid the fiscal cliff, but to put America on sound fiscal ground for the long term. Our debt crisis has reached a magnitude at which business leaders recognize it will require an all of the above response. This survey confirms that,” said Jim Ahler, CEO of the North Carolina Association of CPAs (NCACPA) which recently became an organizational partner of the Campaign to Fix the Debt North Carolina chapter. The association is uniquely positioned to have the pulse of the business community and perceive the severity of the debt crisis.

Fix the Debt North Carolina is a campaign comprised of a bi-partisan group of business leaders, political leaders, and thousands of concerned North Carolinians who are working together to urge our elected leaders to address the nation’s most critical economic threat: our exploding debt.

Comments

It's interesting to see the self-interest of CFOs trumping their reactionary resistance to taxes. Perhaps that's because even the long-time corporate apologist Erskine Bowles has backed away from the plan he and Simpson originally came up with.

Of more concern to me, what's good for business leaders and their companies seems to have little bearing on what's good for the other 98% of working Americans. Trickle down doesn't trickle, not now, not ever.

How about you guys stop listening to shareholders and executives and start thinking about what's good for America?

On the socialist side:

Treat all income (wages and investment income) equally for tax purposes.

Raise the rate on top income earners.

Eliminate all deductions of every kind for everyone.

Stop fucking with Medicare and Social Security. They are not the problem.

End the war on drugs.

Cut defense spending by 30%.

On the capitalist side:

Eliminate corporate taxation entirely.

Tax corporate earnings at the individual level, as income.

Eliminate corporate personhood.

Hold shareholders and corporate executives personally responsible for the liabilities of their companies.

If you're going to the trouble to stand for something, stand for something important.

Fix the Debt, the unserious coalition of CEOs and corporations who are lobbying to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while increasing tax breaks for their companies to send jobs overseas, have spent nearly $1 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions during the past four years, according to a new Public Campaign study.

The study, "Un-Shared Sacrifice: How ‘Fix the Debt’ Companies Buy Washington Influence & Rig the Game," highlights the following points about Fix the Debt:

•The 95 companies that make up the “Fix the Debt” coalition have spent nearly $1 billion over the past four years on lobbying and campaign contributions.
•Twenty-two publicly traded companies that are members of the coalition have spent more on lobbying in the past three years than they have on taxes.

Note to the diarist: James has graciously front-paged your blog. On the off-chance that you're unfamiliar with netiquette, the next step for you is to engage in a discussion with those who have shown interest in your blog.

The Campaign to Fix the Debt is not pushing any one plan in particular, but rather, supporters believe that the following core principles should guide the process:

• Policymakers should acknowledge that our growing debt is a serious threat to the economic well-being and security of the United States.

• It is urgent and essential that we put in place a plan to fix America’s debt. An effective plan must stabilize the debt as a share of the economy, and put it on a downward path.

• This plan should be enacted now, but implemented gradually to protect the fragile economic recovery and to give Americans time to prepare for the changes in the federal budget.

• In order to develop a fiscal plan that can succeed both financially and politically, it must be bipartisan and reforms to all areas of the budget should be included.

• The recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles Commission and other recent bipartisan efforts, which saved at least $4 trillion and addressed all parts of the budget, provide effective frameworks for such a plan.

• The plan should be conducive to long-term economic growth, protect the vulnerable, include credible enforcement mechanisms to ensure that the debt reduction is achieved, and leave the next generation better off.

No offense, but this sounds like pabulum from John Boehner. Nothing specific, nothing meaningful, and not even grounded in sound economic thinking. Bipartisan? What the hell does that mean? Getting a couple of members of one party to side with an army of members on the other side? That's not bipartisan, that's power politics, pure and simple.

You're preaching a warmed-over version of the new austerity. Great Britain, Spain, Greece, France, Japan, etc., are real-live examples that it just doesn't work.

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